Pin It Forward UK – Calling All Would-Be Pinterest Obsessives!

Hands up all Pinterest obsessives and would-be obsessives! Welcome to Pin It Forward UK a huge Pinterest / blog hop of UK-based bloggers.

For those of you that haven’t yet started on Pinterest, it is a website to collect together all your favourite photos and web-based finds into themed boards. You can curate and pin things that catch your eye as you do your daily Wibbly Wobbly Web travels. I have the ‘Pin It’ button on my tool bar to make it super easy to capture that inspiration and if you are a user like myself then you can make your own Pin It buttons to add to your blog posts and website to make it easy for other people to collect your inspiration into a board.

I’ve been pinning for a while now and I absolutely love it! I have 23 public boards of my own, I’m on two group boards, one of which I started, I also have all three of the private boards that you are allowed. If I had nothing else to do I could easily spend all my hours pinning, but I try not to!

So what do I use them for? Well the obvious ones to start with are boards of my own makes:

You might think it a bit narcissistic but actual it has been really useful. OK so I have seen a nice throughput of hits from this board to my blog, and it is great for people when they want to like or repin my work. That is wonderful!

But I’ll tell you the most useful thing about it…it makes it really easy for me to locate a post on my blog! I’m rubbish at remembering when I posted something so all I have to do is go to this board and I can find the post instantly. Brilliant!

I now have a board for my Tutorials, Product Reviews and Book Reviews as well and I would hugely recommend all Arty/Crafty bloggers to do the same thing.

Pinterest is great for work and setting up inspiration boards for projects, if you are happy for these projects to be public that is. I wish that there were more than just three private boards each, so that I could use them for brainstorming commissions. But at least there are now three; when Pinterest started there weren’t any.

I do use Pinterest to keep up with products and trends and you can see what the people and companies you follow, or the rest of the Pinterest users, are pinning and repin or like these pins too. Whilst we are talking about how I use Pinterest for my work, then another of my go-to boards is the Colour Combo board I curate and I often pop over to this board when I need a bit of colour inspiration.

The rest of my boards are things that make me go ‘Ooo’! Stuff I love, stuff I want to return to, other people’s work that is just amazing, things that inspire and are beautiful to me. I love the boards I curate and they make me smile every time I look at them.

But, as creatives in a world where our images are swapped and shared so easily, I believe strongly that Pinning responsibly is very important. I have got better at not going too crazy and just pinning and repining anything that caught my eye without finding the source first. I now also try to add a little note about the piece and/or the designer, which I wasn’t very good at doing when I first started pinning but I would recommend it as good practice and I try to do it more myself. Somebody somewhere spent time making/ drawing/ photographing/ stitching/ designing etc that item/ picture and it should be valued.

Well, I could quite easily just keep talking about Pinterest and the boards I curate, so I won’t bore you with any more of my favourite boards like my A Life Extraordinary board, which is dedicated to women in our history that have been culturally important but often get over looked or forgotten. Or then there is my board of textures and of course the obligatory Kitty board – I mean how can you not?

But I will leave you with a link to the next blogger in the Pin It Forward UK Chain and that is Colleen Babcock from The Magic Bean. If you pop to her blog tomorrow you will see her Pinterest blog post and find her Pinterest Boards here.

I would love to hear how you use Pinterest and if you are new to Pinterest then don’t forget to come follow me if you like what you see on my boards!

Kim

Don’t forget my Cricut giveaway!


Kim Dellow

Kim Dellow is an artist–designer–film-maker living the creative life in London, UK. She's a freelance creative for the craft industry and others, and she loves to share her art-ventures on her blog.

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Jennifer Kirk

    Hi Kim
    I'm going to bookmark this post because it is so interesting & I've learnt a few things about Pinterest from you, which is useful as I'm a newbie to the site. That being said I have quite a few boards now …..lol! Thank you Kim xxx

  2. Redanne

    Hi Kim, thank you for this post, it is really interesting. I am a newbie too and still learning so this was very helpful. Someone asked me yesterday if they could join me on Pinterest and I had forgotten my user name! I did not make it easy for myself when I started up my blog or my Pinterest and used silly names. There is a lesson in there somewhere – lol. Thanks again. Hugs, Anne x

  3. Julie Kitchener

    Thanks Kim i enjoyed reading this! i do have boards on pinterest, i love it!! i will go and check yours out later!

  4. Lesley Thomas

    It might be a nice idea, but I simply don't have the time!

  5. I have never ever used pintrest but really want too. I think I will now!
    Thank you for all the great information, and when I am up and running I will happily follow you.

    Hugs Lisa xxxx

  6. Rita

    Hi Kim, I joined Pinterest, but do not know how to put my pictures on. Maybe now I will try again. Hugs Rita xxxxx

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